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The
FBI operates in "a climate of fear which has chilled aggressive
. . . law enforcement action," whistle-blower Coleen Rowley charges
in the 13-page letter that faults the FBI's leadership for hindering
the investigation of a suspected terrorist prior to Sept. 11, according
to excerpts of the letter obtained yesterday.

The
letter from Rowley, general counsel of the FBI's Minneapolis field office,
to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III was described yesterday as a scathing
indictment of FBI culture and its impact on the way FBI headquarters
handled the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged "20th hijacker"
in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Moussaoui
was arrested Aug. 16 after he aroused suspicion at a Minnesota flight
school. Mueller has testified that the FBI did all it could in trying
to determine what Moussaoui and alleged co-conspirators were planning
for Sept. 11. Rowley argued that officials at
headquarters hindered the probe and top leadership has played
down the Minneapolis field office's efforts to avoid embarrassment.

"The
agents in Minneapolis who were closest to the action, and in the best
position to gauge the situation locally, did fully appreciate the terrorist
risk/danger posed by Moussaoui and the possible co-conspirators even
prior to Sept. 11," Rowley wrote in her letter, which she hand-delivered
this week to Mueller and some members of Congress.

The
new details about Rowley's letter emerged yesterday as leaders of a
joint Senate-House intelligence committee said they plan to investigate
the way the Moussaoui case was handled, part of a broader probe into
what agencies knew before Sept. 11.

"I
would think she would be someone high up on the list of people that
we would like to interview further, and potentially to call as a witness,"
said Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence.

Graham
said the committee intends to begin hearings on June 4 and continue
the sessions into the fall. The initial hearings
will be closed, he said, but the committee hopes to elicit public
testimony whenever possible. It plans to hear from Mueller and CIA Director
George J. Tenet during the last week of June.

Sen.
Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a frequent FBI critic, yesterday expressed
outrage after he was briefed on the letter.

"Director
Mueller can label this letter classified and the FBI can circle the
wagons, but a coverup is not going to work," Grassley said in a
statement. "This letter documents exactly what headquarters knew
and when, and how mid-level officials sabotaged the Moussaoui case before
the attacks."

Rowley
wrote that the careers of high-ranking FBI officials have in the past
been ruined by poor decisions in high-profile cases. "This in turn
resulted in a climate of fear which has chilled aggressive FBI law enforcement
action/decisions," she wrote.

She
said this atmosphere stems from the FBI's organization as a large hierarchy
with numerous layers of supervisors who don't want to risk facing criticism
from Congress and the public for their decisions.

The
investigation of Moussaoui, who faces a federal death penalty trial
in Alexandria, has emerged as a focal point of concerns over whether
the FBI mishandled clues prior to the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and
Washington. Congressional investigators are also looking into a July
10 memo from Phoenix FBI agent Kenneth Williams, which warned that followers
of Osama bin Laden might be taking aviation training in the United States.

The
memo was not acted upon or shared with FBI agents in Minneapolis or
other intelligence agencies. Mueller, who took over as FBI director
Sept. 4, has acknowledged that the FBI did not respond aggressively
enough to Williams's request that aviation schools be canvassed.

Rowley
asserted in her letter that Minneapolis field agents could have obtained
a search warrant for Moussaoui's computer if headquarters had told them
about the Phoenix memo. But FBI staff there resisted trying to obtain
search warrants and scolded agents for seeking last-minute help from
the CIA, she alleged, according to sources.

She
wrote that resistance to requests from Minneapolis
was so fierce that agents there joked that
Osama bin Laden must have infiltrated FBI headquarters.

In
one example, Rowley alleges that officials in
Washington removed crucial information from an affidavit in support
of a search of Moussaoui's computer, causing FBI lawyers to ultimately
reject the application, according to several sources who have read the
letter.

An
FBI official in Washington said the incident is open to interpretation
and that there was no effort to undermine the request.

Rowley
maintained that even without the Phoenix memo, Minneapolis
agents had enough evidence to secretly search Moussaoui's laptop
by securing a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

But
because FBI lawyers had nixed the idea, Rowley argued in her letter
this week, the Phoenix memo would have bolstered the effort to open
the computer, which was later discovered to contain detailed information
about jetliners, wind patterns and crop-dusting aircraft.

"In
all of their conversations and correspondence, headquarters personnel
never disclosed to the Minneapolis agents that the Phoenix
Division had only three weeks earlier warned of al Qaeda operatives
in flight schools seeking flight training for terrorist purposes,"
Rowley wrote, according to one official familiar with the letter.

FBI
attorneys in Washington maintain that Rowley's letter is mistaken, and
that the FBI did not have enough evidence to proceed prior to Sept.
11. Senior U.S. officials told The Washington Post in January that Rowley
had agreed with that assessment; one official stood by that account
yesterday.

As
the chief division counsel for the Minneapolis office, Rowley was the
agent who helped prepare warrant applications and dealt directly with
headquarters staff.

Rowley's
letter is very specific, according to sources who have seen it, and
names those who Rowley alleged threw a "roadblock" into the
Moussaoui investigation.

Classified
federal documents revealed yesterday show that Moussaoui told Hussein
al-Attas, the man who drove him from Oklahoma to the Minnesota flight
school, that it was "acceptable to kill civilians who harm Muslims,"
two sources said. The information was first reported by the New York
Times.

U.S.
law enforcement officials have previously said that al-Attas described
Moussaoui as a hotheaded Muslim radical, but that he did not believe
Moussaoui was a terrorist. Al-Attas, a student from Yemen, has been
held for eight months as a material witness in the Moussaoui case.

Rowley
personally delivered her letter Tuesday to the offices of Sen. Richard
C. Shelby (R-Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate intelligence
committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and the staff of the joint
House-Senate intelligence panel conducting the investigation. She also
met with the staff of that committee on Tuesday, according to sources.
She came to Washington this week at the invitation of the joint committee,
the sources said.

Rowley,
a 47-year-old mother of four who competes in triathlons, lives in Apple
Valley, a suburb of St. Paul, and is a graduate of the University of
Iowa law school, according to records and acquaintances. A native of
northeast Iowa, Rowley came to the Minneapolis field office more than
a decade ago from New York, where she had worked on organized crime
and other sensitive cases, acquaintances said.

Friends
and colleagues describe Rowley as sharp and serious. "She's not
a crackpot or anything; she's a good agent and a sharp lawyer,"
one former colleague said.

Another
former co-worker agreed: "She's very straightforward. She's intelligent,
thoughtful and outspoken, but she's not out of control. . . . If she
sees something she believes is wrong, she is not going to sweep it under
the carpet."

Paul
A. McCabe, the chief spokesman of the Minneapolis office, said neither
Rowley nor D. Strebel Pierce, the special agent in charge, would comment
about the letter.

Staff
writer Steve Fainaru in New York and researcher Lynn Davis contributed
to this report.

(In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed
without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving
the included information for research and educational purposes.)

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